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Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

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Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby Imran Ahmed » Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:38 am

hello Everyone :).

I've recently added a new member to the parrot family, a sun conure and would like to get some help from all of you over this very annoying problem im facing. Basically the decision to return this baby parrot lye's in your hands.
Its simple so please advise correctly. My conure bites my finger, hand or whatever piece of skin it can MISTAKENLY thinking that its the syringe pipe through which i feed it. i know its not biting me like wild parrots do, but it bites me hard enough to tear off my skin or put a nice cut on the fingers. therefore neither can i hold the parrot in hand or bring it out of the cage. It wasn't doing this 2 weeks before when i first got it, now its biting me!!

so please HELP.....
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Imran Ahmed
Lovebird
 
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Re: Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby Pomlover2586 » Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:39 pm

Why do you have an unweaned baby bird?
Iago- WBC
Zazu- BHC
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Pomlover2586
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Re: Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby Imran Ahmed » Tue Aug 14, 2012 4:34 pm

im sorry i forgot to mention. Its about 10-11weeks old. Not unweaned. Its simply biting because it can't differentiate between the syringe and my fingers. But its really annoying. I can't have it to step up, or pick it to play....
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Imran Ahmed
Lovebird
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
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Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Alexander's Parakeet
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Re: Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby terri » Tue Aug 14, 2012 5:02 pm

Im having the same problem.My sun conure is 5 months old and is kicking the crap out of us.I take it as shes playing and being a bully.Any free skin she sees is fair game.I have to say her nip is the hardest of any of my smaller birds[WOW].Your bird is younger so its only going to get worse.Im not worried though my other birds did this to some degree.They will stop at some point but its up to you to teach them.Dont give up on your bird ,alot do this. :D
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terri
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Re: Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby Imran Ahmed » Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:50 am

That's so true, my alexandrine and grey parrot did this but somehow got over it at a certain age. I never did anything special to make'em understand to leave this annoying habit. Its so weird, almost everything to Mango (my conure) seems like a syringe pipe that would feed it :P. He holds anything in his beak, opens both wings and then moves its head up and down with speed in similar way when he gets fed! its not biting, its some sort of understanding that mango show's to itself that everything is food, even the towel or the plastic cover of the pen.

Oh well i guess i have to be very patient with him. Will try to post a video as well. I really don't want to give him away!
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Imran Ahmed
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Gender: This parrot forum member is male
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Re: Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby Tro » Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:51 pm

My GCC was very nippy when I first got him and his bites were hard. I would have cuts all over my fingers from him, it hurt! But the good news is that it stopped after about a month or so after I got him. I took his biting as part of his settling in process and a way for him to test his limits. He will still bite when playing with me (he likes to lay on his back in my palm and grab each of my fingers with his beak :lol:) and will sometimes get to excited and bite a bit to hard, but nowhere near as bad or as frequent as when he was getting settled into his new surroundings.
I never really worked with him that much on getting him to stop biting, because I was unsure of an opropriate method. The different sources where I would find advise on correcting biting behavior would often disagree on the way to handle the problem, so I never started his behavior training because he quit biting on his own, before I even finished researching the topic. :)
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Re: Baby conure mistakenly bites terribly!!!

Postby Scotty » Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:20 pm

Imran Ahmed, as Mike teaches in a video you just have to take it and act like nothing is happening, now of course if the bird was biting the living heck out of me and it hurt, well it's going to be hard not to pay attention or probably jerk and not make the bird nervous and cause a bigger problem.

I have a GCC and she no longer bites and I got her out of it in like 1-2 weeks, probably less than 15 hours. The thing is I'm always home and around the bird so I can always go over and play and give attention.

Just so we're clear here, Mike is the pro and I followed his instructions and it works! So with your bird I suggest the same, of course with a twist!

1. Get some leather gloves you can wear on your hands, now granted the bird is going to be attracted to them and start biting to check it out, but let's face it, I get the feeling that no matter what you do it's just going to bite, no matter what. So at least with some leather gloves on your going to protect your hands from the pain until you break this habit.

2. The bird is young, so I lack a bit of experience here, but birds are suckers for treats, so unless you know what the bird likes, start figuring it out, sunflower seeds should probably work good.

3. With sunflower seeds you are going to want to start training and teaching the bird, so get the bird to step up to start with and then as soon as the bird does, praise him/her, and really make the praises big and noticeable with your voice, repeating over how good. You'll be surprised how quick they catch on, and then give that sunflower seed the second he/she does the right thing.

4. Imran, the name of the game here, is keeping the bird busy doing training and tricks for treats, that the bird is so occupied with this that it doesn't bite, it soon learns that if it wants that tasty treat it has to do something good for it and not bite. So you want to start training and teaching it tricks!

5. Now I know Mike says we don't punish our birds but something I soon realized with my GCC is if they are getting out of hand and being bad sometimes I might say no and then I put the bird down. You also don't have to say no when it bites you can just put it down and I mean the second it starts biting, you have to do it fast, so the bird starts to figure out that the second it bites it get no attention, no tricks and treats and believe me it works.

6. One last thing, 'Target Training' get yourself a chop stick and a clicker and teach the bird to come to you and allow it to bite the chop stick and then you click as soon as he/she comes and bites it and then you give a reward. Teach the bird this is what he/she can bite and get a reward, not your fingers. But it's not like they go crazy biting it, it's just that from what I've seen, this is the only thing we want the bird to bite when we are working with it.

Here's a video of Mike doing Target Training;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGb6bn73MJk

So go get those leather gloves, sunflower seeds and start training.

Have fun, you can do it, I did! ;)
BeBe :gcc:
Scotty
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